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rogant forwardness of our modern contenders for the Bars sufficiency of human reason. These latter seldom fail to shew an unwarrantable disposition to assume, without proving, that God gave no revelation; until men had first departed from the guidance of their reason, and wanted to be brought back, to be told the use and the light of it. And they hastily conclude, that if human reason at first was not in itself a sufficient guide and direction for man; it will follow, that God did not sufficiently provide for him. They tell us, that God

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at first left men to the guidance of natural light, by a of Tone bo to splo due use of reason to discover what best became the station they were placed in; and what duties were incumbent upon them, in the relation they stood to God as their Creator, and to one another as fellow-creatures; modw of main evokon banan ovo o diod 361 expecting no service from them, but what their own reason would suggest, and the very nature and circumstances of their being would have recommended." And they add, that God did not interpose until man had herein greatly failed."---But. all this is directly www.bung man o desen out of of ew Jon contrary to what Moses informs us; according to whom, after Adam was created, before he had time to do, I might say to think, of good or evil; the voice of God commanded him, saying,. Of every tree of the garden попості робив в 19000 PIR OF I thou mayest, freely eat, but of the tree of the knowBoreros pristato le mot 90 din ledge ge of good and wiss and evil thou shalt not eat of it for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. A command was herein given, such as the reason of man would not have investigated, had not the voice of

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b Gen. ii. 16, 17.

God appointed it to him; consequently, a service or observation was herein expected from him, other than what his own reason would have suggested. But these writers will perhaps say of this particular command, that it is allegory and not a fact. Let us then proceed, and we shall find, that as soon as Eve was created, Adam and she were told, that a man should leave his father and his mother, and should cleave unto his wife, and that they should be one flesh. This command, as Moses states it, was, our Saviour tells us, spoken to them by the voice of God. Herein, then, there is no allegory; herein we have the witness of a greater than Moses, that Moses related what was really fact. And it is a testimony, which, duly considered, will prove, that both our Saviour used, and the Jews also, to whom our Saviour spake, received the accounts of what Moses relates to have been done in the beginning, not as allegory and fable; but to be read and cited as true history, God, in fact, declared to Adam and Eve, what was to be the inseparable union of man and wife; and therefore herein they were not "left at first to the guidance of natural light, by a due use of reason to discover what best became the station they were placed in to one another;" but received a special direction by an audible voice from their Maker concerning this relation of life, before they had in any one thing failed in the use of their reason.

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© Have ye not read? said our Saviour, appealing, as to fact, to what was recorded in Moses' writings. See Matth. xix. 4 &c. above cited,

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What these writers say further, that to suppose reason, the reason of man, in itself in any state or cir cumstances an insufficient guide, is directly to impeach the Author of reason; is to say, that God did not give man sufficient abilities to know and to do his duty."--This is equally dogmatical; contradictory to what we are informed by Moses was, in fact, the manner in which, and the abilities with which, Adam and Eve were brought into the world. Moses does not say, that God originally gave Adam a sufficiency of knowledge, for him to depend solely upon it; but he abundantly shews us, that man was not left insufficiently provided for, because he shews us how God would by his voice have directed, as directions would be necessary for him. Upon the whole; the texts of scripture above cited, to shew that there is in man a light of reason, do in no wise determine to what degree it is given; therefore they are not in themselves conclusive against the necessity of revelation. And whatever else has been of fered, may at best be but the conceits of mere imagination, and therefore intrinsically vain; so that I apprehend, if we would proceed as we ought in this inquiry, it may pertinently be examined, whether in the reason of things it may not be right, that the infinite Creator should make a rank of rational beings, so far endowed with reason, as to be above the restraint and confinement of instinct; and yet not endued with so unerring a beam of reason, as to need no further direction, than what would arise from the intimations of their own' breasts. After such an inquiry, carefully made, we' may consider whether man was the creature made, in this rank; and whether the directions mentioned by

Moses, as originally given to the man, may not be apprehended to have been the most proper means to sup-, ply his defects, to make him perfect, thoroughly fuṛnished unto every thing necessary to answer the great end of his creation and being.

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THE creation of God, as far as we can examine it, in the things which may be known by us, shews a won, derful connexion between all these things. If we go to what I would call the lowest, the most dead and inorganical parts of matter; it is a question, whether yegetative life does not subsist in all. It is indeed so slow in some, that it will escape our first inspection; but stones and minerals in time shew enough of it, though it be hard to conceive how small its first beginnings are, that probably there is not any thing in the natural world wherein it really is not to be found. We may trace a gradual increase of the circulation, of it, from the more inert parts, as it were, of matter, to trees, shrubs, plants, and flowers; whose living growth is more and more conspicuous, and daily ornamented with new appearances of accrescent variety and alteration. And how near do some of these come to almost a visible con

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nexion with the animal world? It is difficult to ascer tain how much more sensation there is in an oyster, if there really are not living animals of less sensation than an oyster; of whose motion, we can hardly say more, than that it opens its shell, to take in the water, and, soil which is to feed it, and shuts at the approach of any thing which may more sensibly affect it; than in those plants which open their flowers to the soft and warm air, but will instantly close up and shrivel if any grosser object be moved, near enough to touch them. If we proceed through the innumerable varieties of animal life, until we come to those beings in whom the breath is most conspicuous; if we consider the difference of discernment in these, and carry on the progression un til we enter, the rational world; we may find, says an ingenious writer, that some brutes, seem to have as much reason and knowledge as some who are called men; so that the animal and rational creation do'so nearly approach, that if you take the highest of the one, and compare it with the lowest of the other, there will scarcely be perceived a difference between them. The variety in the capacities of men being considered, will carry us over a vast field, and bring us to the borders of the angelic state; for man was made only a little lower than the angels. How far, had sin not come into the world, and death by sin, the highest and most perfect men might have improved and come near to the lowest order of angels, we cannot say. But if,

* See Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, book iii.

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